Month: June 2015

I recently started a bachelor of game development (specializing in programming) and one of the first things I was asked was “Why am I doing this?”. It was asked in a way that was suppose to make me think about what I want to do with my qualifications and what has inspired me to want to do this. The simple answer is that I love to create things, I enjoy telling stories and I really like video games. But that doesn’t really answer the question. Oblivion and Fallout 3 were two of the greatest games I have ever played (and probably the two games I played the most). Both were incredibly massive open world games, the size of which is still very rarely seen in the video game industry, both are were created by Bethesda Game Studios and both had the same Game Director, Mr.Todd Howard. And that is where my inspiration lies. Since the release fallout 3, Todd has also directed Skyrim and has Fallout 4 being released in the very very near future. Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim have all won Game of the year, and Fallout 4 is all but guaranteed to be another Game of the year. Very few Game Directors have had three of their games in a row be given a game of the year award, so being given four in a row is mind blowing. Now its easy to say “I wish I made these games”, and I do wish I had something to do with the process, but the main source of inspiration I draw from Mr.Howard, is his dedication to the development of one of his games and making it as great as possible for the fans. Fallout 4 was in development for 8 years and its only just been announced that it has actually been in development at all, and it was given a release date about 5 months away, because Todd and his team of developers decided that they are only now entirely happy with the game and are ready to release it. 8 Years working on a project 5 days a week is crazy to me, I cant say iv done anything for more than a month or two, and to not tell anybody about it for that entire process is unheard of. Even in the gaming industry it seems most developers work along the lines of “Hey everyone, we are going to be starting the development of a game now, so it will be out in a few years” (See Final Fantasy 7 remake) or even “Well. We’ve reached the date we said we would release the game but we aren’t done yet, so we are pushing it back a few months” (See Witcher 3, Batman Arkham Knight, Dying light ect, ect), or god forbid “Yeah, we didn’t actually get around to finishing the game in time, so we had to rush development, and now its full of bugs” (See Ubisoft), so the mindset of “We are going to work on this for as long a we have to, until we all feel like we have made the game the best we possibly can, and we wont even give a release date until the game is done” shows a lot of dedication to ones craft, and that is something I find inspiring. Obviously, if people like the games I will one day create, than that will be incredible, but if I can say that with every game I make I worked as hard as I could and never released a game that I feel I could have made better, I’ll be happy.